I figured you didn't mean anything by it. I'm just a little sensitive about it myself. ^_^
As far as knowing the same guy, let's just say I work with a lot of newspapers. I'm the new DBA they hired when he notified of his plans to job-hop. In less than a month, I'd rewritten half of his applications using better methodologies and full documentation. I may not know his trick at latching on to upper management, but the regular management is fully enamored with me.
But I like being a resource. I want people to ask me questions, and I like to show how good I am by actually giving good results. Sometimes when people ask, I help them find better ways of doing things. That was where he failed the hardest. Even if he was really good, it got to the point where nobody could actually say what he did there.
I have a definite role, and I like knowing I've earned it.
I really hope that someday, he learns he isn't God's gift to his current employer. Oh well. ^_^
I suppose. But the prima-donna at my current place of work was actually in his late twenties to early thirties. He has written and published a book on Linux, and from that point on, was insufferable.
The thing is, I'm 23, and can work rings around the guy, and my managers all like me better. Unfortunately, he quit, citing that he could make much more money elsewhere. So far, he has, and I am still hoping that someday, somebody bursts his bubble.
But the comment about prima-donnas using management is spot-on! He would actually fight with lower management that by not doing something his way, they were setting themselves up for failure, and was fond of making ticking noises to illustrate that our time without his genius was almost at an end.
But none of that mattered. He was literally fire-proof, and it drove everyone in the IT department and management to fits.
Prima-donnas are just the way they are. Vocation has little to do with it in the long run. Age, race, orientation. It doesn't matter. Be out in the industry long enough, you'll run into all types.
I know you're speaking from experience, but stop generalizing, eh?
Now, before you ask, it's a three row prompt. First is the date in dark grey, next is the current user, machine and directory, next is the number of commands executed in the current shell, and then a command prompt. It looks kinda like this:
I guess Steve Balmer wasn't quite enough.
Maybe they're just making sure nobody can miss
their stance on this issue.
Aside from the fact that I like
Pac-Man, why does he even bother? The more
Microsoft points to the GPL and yells
"See!? They aren't sharing!" They
give the GPL that much more attention.
And, the most amusing part is that they're
playing right into our hands. The open source
couldn't pay for this kind of publicity.
Remember, the more Microsoft whines, the
more you'll hear people mentioning companies
like IBM and Redhat who don't seem to have
any problem profiting from this terrible
blight in software licensing. Every time
they cry about not being able to use GPL'd
code, it just takes a few (even one) reporters
to point out that all the GPL means is share
and share alike.
Don't worry. They're just doing our jobs
for us. Who needs to bash Microsoft when
they'll do themselves in just nicely.
And of course... what happens when a
pregnant wife must be rushed to the hospital,
or an on-duty volunteer EMT has to get to
the local ambulance service to pick up the
emergency vehicle.
Cops on the street will ask *why* you are
speeding for a reason! There are many perfectly valid reasons, none of which can
be covered by an automated system such as the
one used here.
A few other people here have also mentioned
signal loss and sudden jumps in location.
IANAL, but I would like to see just how badly
this company can be sued for intervening where
it has no jurisdiction or proof.
Exactly. I just finished "Weaving The Web" by Tim Berners-Lee, and I just have to wonder how he takes things like this. His chapter on what he thinks the future of the web would be is fairly englightening on where the W3C will go.
The impression I get is that he wants the web to be self-building to a point. This would certainly aid that development, but I'm not so sure he'd agree with doing it this way. If the W3 came up with this, I'd be all for it. But there's no way in hell I'll trust any one company to use something like this responsibly.
What, has everyone forgot the point of the
internet?
So there's a meta tag. And when company X
makes another new feature I don't want my site
to participate in, I'll need yet another meta
tag, and another meta tag, ad infinitum. Why
can't there be a meta tag to TURN IT ON
instead of turn it off. Isn't that what meta
tags are for? To give browsers extra
information?
Retrofitting the entire internet IS
NOT going to make friends. This should
be more of an opt-in than an opt-out. They're
assuming that by default, everyone wants to participate when the exact
opposite is probably true.
I love Mandrake. Redhat is nice, but do a search on
rpmfind.net and see what comes up most. Mandrake
has more recent builds on almost all packages than
Redhat ever has. Nicer bootup system, more recent
kernel builds, better desktop configuration tools, it
would be a shame to lose it! Especially since the 8.0
release was so highly acclaimed!
::sob::
Say it ain't so, Mandrake! Say it ain't so! --
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
No. What he wrote was satire, if
you know what the word means.
Besides that, have you ever fucking
read the scientology documents? These
things come from scientologists themselves,
so their validity is not suspect,
because we aren't supposed to see them.
Most of their major founders were arrested
for spying on the government and tax fraud
for Pete's sake. They became a religion for
tax purposes! This is not a valid religion!
How can you fucking defend a pseudo-religion
that has a mantra that unbelievers can be
tricked, lied to or destroyed?
Germany and France have it right. Take
a fucking psychology course and see just
why the Scientology courses work as they do.
Read Time
if you don't believe me. Nobody makes this
shit up, it's stranger than fiction!
Why? Because I've got the maturity and social skills to back my technical skills, and some seriously broad-based troubleshooting skills.
That's the main point I wanted to contest. You seemed to say that simply because you were older, you had the above attributes. You know as well as I do, that this is simply not true.
Quite a few friends of mine could rightly argue that they are more mature than their older counterparts on many occasions. People are different, period. I won't work for any company that uses my age against me. So far, it hasn't been an issue. But the person who started this thread (not hiring under 25) proves my point. Age does not mean level-headedness, maturity, or knowledge. Experience is useless unless you take the time to learn from it.
That said, I've outcoded people twice my age and set up coding reviews and standardization along with documentation systems that everyone has liked so far. The Oracle DBA I replaced had a penchant for riding Harleys and smearing Donuts on the screen of our project leader, along with womanizing and so on. He was twice my age, and if you even try to argue he had a higher level of maturity, I'd laugh in your face. I did all of this just after I turned 22. If anyone said I was a less capable employee than our last DBA, I would have promptly tried to prove them wrong. If that didn't work, I'd quit.
I don't care if that's how the world is, or how most employers think. I know what's right, and I'll stick by my guns.
The only thing you get by agreeing with flamebait, is to become flamebait yourself. Your post makes you come off as a braggart, a bigot, and an insensitive idiot.
Didn't we learn in High School that people are more than their skin color, sex, religion, looks, age, weight, etc.? Propigating this crap, for *any* reason, just makes you part of the problem.
That said, I'm 23. I've been doing this stuff since I was 17. Six years of anything at my age is almost impossible, but I did it anyway. I make a comfortable living, and I sincerely doubt I'm on the layoff pool right now, simply because I have been called the best programmer this company has had by every one of my bosses. I wasn't a college drinker, I don't go out and party; I'm one of those types who was 40 when they were 16.
Really, the only thing I still have that betrays my youth, is the fact that I still have ideals. That things can be what we wish them to be, moralistically and so on. But that's something I'll never stop supporting. It's why you're calling us stupid punks, and I'm telling my cohorts to get more experience and skills and simply be better people.
Be constructive or destructive. But I think you showed your true colors here.
120 x 600 IMU Skyscraper
160 x 600 IMU Wide Skyscraper
300 x 250 IMU Medium Rectangle
336 x 280 IMU Large Rectangle
240 x 400 IMU Vertical Rectangle
From a design standpoint, most designers try to keep the left navigation
less than 1/4 the size of the content. Hence, most of my navigation
on the sites I design is equal to or less than 150 pixels wide - assuming
a 600 pixel screen width. Now, if anyone were to use a skyscraper, and
the left nav was 150 pixels wide, that's 270 - 300 pixels, up to half
of the screen real-estate available. Not much room for articles. Bigger
does not necessarily translate to better.
All of the sizes I've left in the list are unacceptably large. The reason
people don't mind the 468x60 images is because they're not obtrusive.
Horizontal ads are much easier to place than big blocks or "skyscrapers."
I'd like to see site viewing statistics on sites that use these new
banner sizes. Why did they skip a vertical version of the 468x60, and
jump straight to an ad that is twice as wide?
I'm not saying this because it affects me, either. I personally keep an
updated ad server list that blocks over 10,000 active servers -
transforming any content they provide into a 1x1 pixel transparent gif.
These sizes will provoke one of three reactions:
People hate the images, but put up with them, secretly looking for
sites that offer similar services with less distracting ads.
More people will turn to using ad blockers such as junkbuster, or
the solution I came up with.
The site will be publicly boycotted.
Even after users become accustomed to the new ad sizes, that doesn't mean
they will *like* them.
I predict that customized proxy servers will start sprouting up, blocking
ads the same way netnanny blocks porn. This of course will result in an
arms-race between those who provide these services, and those who want ads
to appear unmolested.
Then again, I'm giving apathy a fairly wide berth. Maybe banner
blindness will just evolve to a new level.
I'd just be exceptionally concerned about
accidently wiping out too much of the greenhouse.
Without it, we'd be Mars.
"What's the temperature outside, bobby?"
"Um... according to our kelva-meter, 200K... so
-73C? If I wear my enviro-suit, can I go out
and play? It's above -100!"
A while ago I read an article discussing a similar vein, but a long discussion on psychology played a large part. Why? Because if children can be shown images of (for all they know) real children performing acts they may be leery about, they'll be less inclined to say "No." It's the whole, "They did it, it can't be that bad," type of thinking.
An innovative child pornographer would make virtual pictures to draw in real children, so he/she/it can perform *actual* sex with the children. That's the only real danger I can see in realistic simulations of child-porn. I say only, because there may come a day when hollywood or some other entity makes a film depicting just what we're talking about here, as a documentary of some sort. You can only know the true horror of a situation when you see it first hand, no matter how much it sickens you to watch. It's a way of raising public outcry when there might not be much.
Admittedly, child-porn already has almost the entire free world signed up to see it destroyed, but the option is still there. What if a victim of child-porn makes the documentary, for instance? What then?
For most people this is how computers should be. They're tools, incredibly complex tools, but the complexity should be hidden behind simple metaphors. It isn't most peoples business to know about how computers do things, only that they do it.
That's true, and false at the same time. I'll go for a car analogy here. Everyone agrees that an automatic transmission is much easier to drive than a manual. Shifting can be made automatic, so why not do so? ABS is another extension of that as well. But one intrinsic law that extends to all facets of life is this: The more options you want, the more complex the device.
Don't believe me? Sure an automatic is easier to drive, but you lose the ability to downshift in bad weather. Sure ABS keeps you from skidding, but for those who've taken defensive driving courses, or want to do trick driving, ABS is just a hinderance. Together, ABS and Automatic Transmission "dumb down" the car, to make it easier. But in doing so, the car can't do as much as before.
Computers are meant to be general purpose tools, to do anything imaginable under software. Try to bulk add/modify 1000 users in an NT environment, I dare you. If you don't have to resort to undocumented features or write your own binary modification routines through MS DLL's, I'll be greatly impressed. Wrappers are just that, they wrap out the harder stuff into nifty little packages. But they also restrict your abilities.
It's simple. So long as computers remain general-purpose do-it-all tools, they'll be hard to use; merely due to the sheer amount of things they're capable of accomplishing. Unless we start phasing computers out, and start introducing very specific tools that do parts of a computer's vast arsinal, that's just the truth. We're already seeing it in digital books (no more downloding text files, and reading them with some software program), email checking hardware (no more chosing an email client, no more pop mail, etc.), and set top boxes for browsing the web.
Seems to me that the future of computers lays in splitting up their abilities among many other devices; that's the only way to simplify. Remember, there are still plenty of people out there who can't even program a VCR. If we just keep making things simpler, we'll be left with one device that does nothing, and has only one large red button. Humans have to pick the slack up somewhere.
Ok, I'm going to stop this before it degenerates into "Boy, those stupid lusers. What's the big deal about 10 digits?"
It's simple, really. Studies in short term memory have shown that only 7-9 things can effectively fit there. It is no coincidence that phone numbers are 7 digits in length. For local calls, this makes perfect sense. For long distance, the other three numbers are memorized as a separate three digits. So you remember a three digit number, and a seven digit number. Both within the realm of human capacity. If we switch to 10+ digit phone numbers as a norm, things won't be so easy.
There are memory mneumonics that can be used to compress 10+ numbers down to something easier to remember, but unless we want to start teaching psychological memory techniques in our high schools, most people will not know them.
I, for one, don't want to have to sit and stare at every phone number I ever see, reciting it until it's successfully transferred into long-term memory. Phone books would also be a pain. Imagine looking something up, remembering the numbers only to reach for the phone and only remember *most* of the phone number you were about to dial. Gee, that's just so useful.
Adding more numbers *will not* solve the problem. We just need to spread them out in a more efficient manner. We already have 7 digits, that's 100 million numbers per area code. Even with only 10 area codes, that's 1 billion phone numbers. Personally, I don't understand why we're having so much trouble.
Good point. Political infighting is never good. But that's what I meant anyway. The fact that it was made public was minorly embarassing. The fact that we spent millions investigating, prosecuting, and eventually giving up on it is really sick.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Reminds me of that episode of Sliders where something like 90% of the us population has a law degree, and you have to have a briefcase of paperwork to buy a hamburger. I honestly don't know how it got this bad, but it is. Heck, you can't even critisize a corporation anymore without being sued. What ever happened to free speech?
I think this brings everything to light, though. The more this gets blown up, the more people rail against having a president that squeeked into office against popular opinion and by only a 1/10000th of a percentage point, the better. Strangely enough, this is GOOD for everyone here. The best way to get reform is to get definitive proof that the current system doesn't work. Didn't we just do that? Heh.
Good point. But therin lies the snag. How can you keep telling American Citizens that "We're the leader of the free world," and "Our way is the best," when they start questioning just how badly the election was botched.
I mean, didn't we just threaten to overthrow a president in another country that had a *wider* margin than what we have here? Didn't their whole voting system and results come under such scrutiny that said president ran away?
Leader of the free world? Sure. Laughing stock leader of the free world. First Clinton's indiscresions, and now this...::sigh::
I'm not going to argue scemantics, here. I know we're a republic, it's been said so many times that I think I'll be dreaming about it for weeks. It's irrelevant. We call ourselves the leaders of the free world, and here we are squabbling over 300 votes out of MILLIONS.
The US is being laughed at heartily, make no mistake. My point is still valid. We need to start putting our money where our mouth is. After, of course, we pull our pants back up.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny...
I keep trying, and trying, but I can't seem to imagine Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C as a bunch of hippie anarchists.
Maybe I just need another shot of Jack.
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Sounds about right.
grep default.ida access_log | wc -l
Gives me about 24. Anywhere from every 5-15 minutes or so, from all over the world. It's really interesting.
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
I figured you didn't mean anything by it. I'm just a little sensitive about it myself. ^_^
As far as knowing the same guy, let's just say I work with a lot of newspapers. I'm the new DBA they hired when he notified of his plans to job-hop. In less than a month, I'd rewritten half of his applications using better methodologies and full documentation. I may not know his trick at latching on to upper management, but the regular management is fully enamored with me.
But I like being a resource. I want people to ask me questions, and I like to show how good I am by actually giving good results. Sometimes when people ask, I help them find better ways of doing things. That was where he failed the hardest. Even if he was really good, it got to the point where nobody could actually say what he did there.
I have a definite role, and I like knowing I've earned it.
I really hope that someday, he learns he isn't God's gift to his current employer. Oh well. ^_^
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
I suppose. But the prima-donna at my current place of work was actually in his late twenties to early thirties. He has written and published a book on Linux, and from that point on, was insufferable.
The thing is, I'm 23, and can work rings around the guy, and my managers all like me better. Unfortunately, he quit, citing that he could make much more money elsewhere. So far, he has, and I am still hoping that someday, somebody bursts his bubble.
But the comment about prima-donnas using management is spot-on! He would actually fight with lower management that by not doing something his way, they were setting themselves up for failure, and was fond of making ticking noises to illustrate that our time without his genius was almost at an end.
But none of that mattered. He was literally fire-proof, and it drove everyone in the IT department and management to fits.
Prima-donnas are just the way they are. Vocation has little to do with it in the long run. Age, race, orientation. It doesn't matter. Be out in the industry long enough, you'll run into all types.
I know you're speaking from experience, but stop generalizing, eh?
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Now, before you ask, it's a three row prompt. First is the date in dark grey, next is the current user, machine and directory, next is the number of commands executed in the current shell, and then a command prompt. It looks kinda like this:
Fri Jul 6 11:28:12-=| sthomas@hamster
384 Command
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
I guess Steve Balmer wasn't quite enough. Maybe they're just making sure nobody can miss their stance on this issue.
Aside from the fact that I like Pac-Man, why does he even bother? The more Microsoft points to the GPL and yells "See!? They aren't sharing!" They give the GPL that much more attention.
And, the most amusing part is that they're playing right into our hands. The open source couldn't pay for this kind of publicity.
Remember, the more Microsoft whines, the more you'll hear people mentioning companies like IBM and Redhat who don't seem to have any problem profiting from this terrible blight in software licensing. Every time they cry about not being able to use GPL'd code, it just takes a few (even one) reporters to point out that all the GPL means is share and share alike.
Don't worry. They're just doing our jobs for us. Who needs to bash Microsoft when they'll do themselves in just nicely.
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
And of course... what happens when a pregnant wife must be rushed to the hospital, or an on-duty volunteer EMT has to get to the local ambulance service to pick up the emergency vehicle.
Cops on the street will ask *why* you are speeding for a reason! There are many perfectly valid reasons, none of which can be covered by an automated system such as the one used here.
A few other people here have also mentioned signal loss and sudden jumps in location. IANAL, but I would like to see just how badly this company can be sued for intervening where it has no jurisdiction or proof.
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Oh, don't worry about it. I knew who the comment was directed at. It's nice to see people advocating the use of PHP. ^_^
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Exactly. I just finished "Weaving The Web" by Tim Berners-Lee, and I just have to wonder how he takes things like this. His chapter on what he thinks the future of the web would be is fairly englightening on where the W3C will go.
The impression I get is that he wants the web to be self-building to a point. This would certainly aid that development, but I'm not so sure he'd agree with doing it this way. If the W3 came up with this, I'd be all for it. But there's no way in hell I'll trust any one company to use something like this responsibly.
Ah well. We'll just have to see.
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Heh, that's a good one. Being as my personal home page is 100% cached/buffered templated PHP with a custom written news and forum system.
Ah, PHP. Food of the gods.
Now, if they could only add taint mode and more restrictive variable scope for classes. But, nobody's perfect. ^_^
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
What, has everyone forgot the point of the internet?
So there's a meta tag. And when company X makes another new feature I don't want my site to participate in, I'll need yet another meta tag, and another meta tag, ad infinitum. Why can't there be a meta tag to TURN IT ON instead of turn it off. Isn't that what meta tags are for? To give browsers extra information?
Retrofitting the entire internet IS NOT going to make friends. This should be more of an opt-in than an opt-out. They're assuming that by default, everyone wants to participate when the exact opposite is probably true.
::sigh:: Embrace and extend. Yay.
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Damn.
I love Mandrake. Redhat is nice, but do a search on
rpmfind.net and see what comes up most. Mandrake
has more recent builds on almost all packages than
Redhat ever has. Nicer bootup system, more recent
kernel builds, better desktop configuration tools, it
would be a shame to lose it! Especially since the 8.0
release was so highly acclaimed!
::sob::
Say it ain't so, Mandrake! Say it ain't so!
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
No. What he wrote was satire, if you know what the word means.
Besides that, have you ever fucking read the scientology documents? These things come from scientologists themselves, so their validity is not suspect, because we aren't supposed to see them.
Most of their major founders were arrested for spying on the government and tax fraud for Pete's sake. They became a religion for tax purposes! This is not a valid religion! How can you fucking defend a pseudo-religion that has a mantra that unbelievers can be tricked, lied to or destroyed?
Germany and France have it right. Take a fucking psychology course and see just why the Scientology courses work as they do.
Read Time if you don't believe me. Nobody makes this shit up, it's stranger than fiction!
This guy's being railroaded. Fuck off.
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Why? Because I've got the maturity and social skills to back my technical skills, and some seriously broad-based troubleshooting skills.
That's the main point I wanted to contest. You seemed to say that simply because you were older, you had the above attributes. You know as well as I do, that this is simply not true.
Quite a few friends of mine could rightly argue that they are more mature than their older counterparts on many occasions. People are different, period. I won't work for any company that uses my age against me. So far, it hasn't been an issue. But the person who started this thread (not hiring under 25) proves my point. Age does not mean level-headedness, maturity, or knowledge. Experience is useless unless you take the time to learn from it.
That said, I've outcoded people twice my age and set up coding reviews and standardization along with documentation systems that everyone has liked so far. The Oracle DBA I replaced had a penchant for riding Harleys and smearing Donuts on the screen of our project leader, along with womanizing and so on. He was twice my age, and if you even try to argue he had a higher level of maturity, I'd laugh in your face. I did all of this just after I turned 22. If anyone said I was a less capable employee than our last DBA, I would have promptly tried to prove them wrong. If that didn't work, I'd quit.
I don't care if that's how the world is, or how most employers think. I know what's right, and I'll stick by my guns.
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
The only thing you get by agreeing with flamebait, is to become flamebait yourself. Your post makes you come off as a braggart, a bigot, and an insensitive idiot.
Didn't we learn in High School that people are more than their skin color, sex, religion, looks, age, weight, etc.? Propigating this crap, for *any* reason, just makes you part of the problem.
That said, I'm 23. I've been doing this stuff since I was 17. Six years of anything at my age is almost impossible, but I did it anyway. I make a comfortable living, and I sincerely doubt I'm on the layoff pool right now, simply because I have been called the best programmer this company has had by every one of my bosses. I wasn't a college drinker, I don't go out and party; I'm one of those types who was 40 when they were 16.
Really, the only thing I still have that betrays my youth, is the fact that I still have ideals. That things can be what we wish them to be, moralistically and so on. But that's something I'll never stop supporting. It's why you're calling us stupid punks, and I'm telling my cohorts to get more experience and skills and simply be better people.
Be constructive or destructive. But I think you showed your true colors here.
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
NEW INTERACTIVE MARKETING UNITS
120 x 600 IMU Skyscraper 160 x 600 IMU Wide Skyscraper 300 x 250 IMU Medium Rectangle 336 x 280 IMU Large Rectangle 240 x 400 IMU Vertical Rectangle
From a design standpoint, most designers try to keep the left navigation less than 1/4 the size of the content. Hence, most of my navigation on the sites I design is equal to or less than 150 pixels wide - assuming a 600 pixel screen width. Now, if anyone were to use a skyscraper, and the left nav was 150 pixels wide, that's 270 - 300 pixels, up to half of the screen real-estate available. Not much room for articles. Bigger does not necessarily translate to better.
All of the sizes I've left in the list are unacceptably large. The reason people don't mind the 468x60 images is because they're not obtrusive. Horizontal ads are much easier to place than big blocks or "skyscrapers." I'd like to see site viewing statistics on sites that use these new banner sizes. Why did they skip a vertical version of the 468x60, and jump straight to an ad that is twice as wide?
I'm not saying this because it affects me, either. I personally keep an updated ad server list that blocks over 10,000 active servers - transforming any content they provide into a 1x1 pixel transparent gif. These sizes will provoke one of three reactions:
Even after users become accustomed to the new ad sizes, that doesn't mean they will *like* them.
I predict that customized proxy servers will start sprouting up, blocking ads the same way netnanny blocks porn. This of course will result in an arms-race between those who provide these services, and those who want ads to appear unmolested.
Then again, I'm giving apathy a fairly wide berth. Maybe banner blindness will just evolve to a new level.
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Great!
I'd just be exceptionally concerned about accidently wiping out too much of the greenhouse. Without it, we'd be Mars.
"What's the temperature outside, bobby?"
"Um... according to our kelva-meter, 200K... so -73C? If I wear my enviro-suit, can I go out and play? It's above -100!"
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
There is yet another way of looking at this
A while ago I read an article discussing a similar vein, but a long discussion on psychology played a large part. Why? Because if children can be shown images of (for all they know) real children performing acts they may be leery about, they'll be less inclined to say "No." It's the whole, "They did it, it can't be that bad," type of thinking.
An innovative child pornographer would make virtual pictures to draw in real children, so he/she/it can perform *actual* sex with the children. That's the only real danger I can see in realistic simulations of child-porn. I say only, because there may come a day when hollywood or some other entity makes a film depicting just what we're talking about here, as a documentary of some sort. You can only know the true horror of a situation when you see it first hand, no matter how much it sickens you to watch. It's a way of raising public outcry when there might not be much.
Admittedly, child-porn already has almost the entire free world signed up to see it destroyed, but the option is still there. What if a victim of child-porn makes the documentary, for instance? What then?
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
For most people this is how computers should be. They're tools, incredibly complex tools, but the complexity should be hidden behind simple metaphors. It isn't most peoples business to know about how computers do things, only that they do it.
That's true, and false at the same time. I'll go for a car analogy here. Everyone agrees that an automatic transmission is much easier to drive than a manual. Shifting can be made automatic, so why not do so? ABS is another extension of that as well. But one intrinsic law that extends to all facets of life is this: The more options you want, the more complex the device.
Don't believe me? Sure an automatic is easier to drive, but you lose the ability to downshift in bad weather. Sure ABS keeps you from skidding, but for those who've taken defensive driving courses, or want to do trick driving, ABS is just a hinderance. Together, ABS and Automatic Transmission "dumb down" the car, to make it easier. But in doing so, the car can't do as much as before.
Computers are meant to be general purpose tools, to do anything imaginable under software. Try to bulk add/modify 1000 users in an NT environment, I dare you. If you don't have to resort to undocumented features or write your own binary modification routines through MS DLL's, I'll be greatly impressed. Wrappers are just that, they wrap out the harder stuff into nifty little packages. But they also restrict your abilities.
It's simple. So long as computers remain general-purpose do-it-all tools, they'll be hard to use; merely due to the sheer amount of things they're capable of accomplishing. Unless we start phasing computers out, and start introducing very specific tools that do parts of a computer's vast arsinal, that's just the truth. We're already seeing it in digital books (no more downloding text files, and reading them with some software program), email checking hardware (no more chosing an email client, no more pop mail, etc.), and set top boxes for browsing the web.
Seems to me that the future of computers lays in splitting up their abilities among many other devices; that's the only way to simplify. Remember, there are still plenty of people out there who can't even program a VCR. If we just keep making things simpler, we'll be left with one device that does nothing, and has only one large red button. Humans have to pick the slack up somewhere.
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Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Ok, I'm going to stop this before it degenerates into "Boy, those stupid lusers. What's the big deal about 10 digits?"
It's simple, really. Studies in short term memory have shown that only 7-9 things can effectively fit there. It is no coincidence that phone numbers are 7 digits in length. For local calls, this makes perfect sense. For long distance, the other three numbers are memorized as a separate three digits. So you remember a three digit number, and a seven digit number. Both within the realm of human capacity. If we switch to 10+ digit phone numbers as a norm, things won't be so easy.
There are memory mneumonics that can be used to compress 10+ numbers down to something easier to remember, but unless we want to start teaching psychological memory techniques in our high schools, most people will not know them.
I, for one, don't want to have to sit and stare at every phone number I ever see, reciting it until it's successfully transferred into long-term memory. Phone books would also be a pain. Imagine looking something up, remembering the numbers only to reach for the phone and only remember *most* of the phone number you were about to dial. Gee, that's just so useful.
Adding more numbers *will not* solve the problem. We just need to spread them out in a more efficient manner. We already have 7 digits, that's 100 million numbers per area code. Even with only 10 area codes, that's 1 billion phone numbers. Personally, I don't understand why we're having so much trouble.
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Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Dude, you need some Prozac.
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Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Good point. Political infighting is never good. But that's what I meant anyway. The fact that it was made public was minorly embarassing. The fact that we spent millions investigating, prosecuting, and eventually giving up on it is really sick.
But what can I say, gotta have them moral values.
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Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Couldn't have said it better myself. Reminds me of that episode of Sliders where something like 90% of the us population has a law degree, and you have to have a briefcase of paperwork to buy a hamburger. I honestly don't know how it got this bad, but it is. Heck, you can't even critisize a corporation anymore without being sued. What ever happened to free speech?
I think this brings everything to light, though. The more this gets blown up, the more people rail against having a president that squeeked into office against popular opinion and by only a 1/10000th of a percentage point, the better. Strangely enough, this is GOOD for everyone here. The best way to get reform is to get definitive proof that the current system doesn't work. Didn't we just do that? Heh.
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Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Good point. But therin lies the snag. How can you keep telling American Citizens that "We're the leader of the free world," and "Our way is the best," when they start questioning just how badly the election was botched.
I mean, didn't we just threaten to overthrow a president in another country that had a *wider* margin than what we have here? Didn't their whole voting system and results come under such scrutiny that said president ran away?
Leader of the free world? Sure. Laughing stock leader of the free world. First Clinton's indiscresions, and now this... ::sigh::
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Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
I'm not going to argue scemantics, here. I know we're a republic, it's been said so many times that I think I'll be dreaming about it for weeks. It's irrelevant. We call ourselves the leaders of the free world, and here we are squabbling over 300 votes out of MILLIONS.
The US is being laughed at heartily, make no mistake. My point is still valid. We need to start putting our money where our mouth is. After, of course, we pull our pants back up.
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Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer